When Jesus comes to Jairus’s house, he says to the girl, “Get up,” and then he tells the others to feed her. “Get up” is the way it’s translated here, but it could also be “wake up” or “stir yourself.”
If the languages in the world are dissimilar, the power of the tradition is one and the same. The churches founded in Germany believe and hand down no differently, nor do those among the Iberians, among the Celts, in the Orient, in Egypt, or in Libya, or those established in the middle of the world.
I took my coffee out to the porch this morning, putting on my glasses first in case a bird should drop by the birdbath. Instead, a butterfly floated onto the butterfly bush. I have deprived myself of butterflies, I thought sadly. All my life they’ve been dancing in the air, and I’ve had my nose stuck in a book. Even now, I’d be reading the New York Times except that it didn’t come.
Humility, Benedict teaches, treads tenderly upon the life around it. When we know our place in the universe, we can afford to value the place of others. We need them, in fact, to make up what is wanting in us. We stand in the face of others without having to take up all the space.
As children of God we are part of God’s ultimate purposes wherever we are. It is a beautiful thing when we as individuals, like Joseph and Zechariah, catch a glimpse of ourselves in the divine picture, seeing our life experiences as part of God’s plan.
The kingdom of heaven is all around us, among us, in unsuspected places, in places where we might expect to find it if we look hard enough, and growing in ways we may find distasteful or surprising.
The unique, the highest proof of love is this, to love the person who is against us. This is why Truth himself bore the suffering of the cross and yet bestowed his love on his persecutors, saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
When you have to listen to abuse, that means you are being buffeted by the wind. When your anger is roused, you are being tossed by the waves. So when the winds blow and the waves mount high, the boat is in danger, your heart is imperiled, your heart is taking a battering. On hearing yourself insulted, you long to retaliate;
The truth about being human is that all we have, all we are, all we ever will be are gifts from God. At the offertory we are invited to reflect on our attitude toward “things.” We are constantly challenged in Scripture not to allow things to become our “god.”
The act of keeping close to the marriage of our work and vocation is the act of returning day after day, not only to the workplace, but to the physical and philosophical foundations that keep it alive in our hearts and minds as we grow and mature and even as we age and die. To be faithful to a work, we must welcome its vulnerabilities and difficulties as well as the many gifts it bestows.